Author: Ophelia Benson

A climate scientist is fired for teaching climate science. Much sensible.

The only climate scientist teaching at West Point, the US army’s military academy, was fired after he resisted an order to stop teaching about the human causes of the climate emergency, a lawsuit claims.

Dr Adam Kalkstein, a civilian professor of geography at the New York institution, was terminated after the spring semester this year, six months after a testy meeting with Brig Gen Shane Reeves, then dean of West Point’s academic board, the court filing said.

According to Kalkstein, who taught army cadets there for 17 years, he told the dean at a November 2025 meeting that an order to cut from the curriculum content about the human causes of climate change was immoral and potentially illegal.

It’s also dummmmm. Ignoring the causes ain’t going to make them uncause the thing they caused. Trump can hide under his desk all he wants; climate change still gonna climate change.

Reeves responded by “storming out” of the meeting after telling Kalkstein that Donald Trump was commander in chief, and set the agenda for West Point, the lawsuit alleged.

An agenda is one thing, and systematic lying is another.

Kalkstein’s attorney, Michael Sussman, told the Times that his client is a conservative Republican who believes military students need to know the truth about the causes of the climate crisis as a matter of national security.

“He is loyal to the cadets and the academy,” he said. “And to his perspective, edicts that he can’t say what’s true in a classroom is beyond his tolerance and totally counterproductive.”

See, it actually is possible to be conservative and see matters of facts and/or evidence as matters of facts and/or evidence rather than political tokens in a big game of Political Chicken.

In further comments to Stars and Stripes, Sussman said Kalkstein’s position was not ideological. “There are certainly people who, anything Donald Trump does, they want to complain about it and scream and yell about it. He’s not that guy,” Sussman said.

Ok wait a second. Why would we not want to scream and yell about anything (everything) Trump does? Everything Trump does is bad. That’s the reality. He’s quite thorough about it. (Ok the magic gender issue is the exception. He’s right about that but for his own stupid reasons.)

Trump has flipped between calling the climate emergency “a hoax” or “a scam”, to admitting it exists but insisting that climate scientists are politically motivated and that the climate “will change back”.

Yep yep yep. That’s the ticket. The climate will flip, probably in the middle of the night, in January, when everyone is asleep.

Oh COME ON.

Trump said Thursday he is renaming Lake Ontario to be known as “Lake America” in the United States as he exacerbates his trade war with Canada.

The Republican president signed an executive order that updated the lake’s name for the U.S. geographic naming service. Trump cannot force Canada to follow his preferred naming convention, however.

He can’t force us to follow it either.

Also, “America” is just wrong. Lake Ontario is not Lake Canada, and none of the other Greats are Lake Canada either. Lake New York would fit the pattern; Lake America is just stupid.

Trump has been floating the idea of the name change in recent days as the U.S. announced it was imposing 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods over the weekend after talks between the countries broke down. Trump has been needling America’s northern neighbor since he returned to the White House last year, suggesting the ally with whom the U.S. once had warm relations should instead be absorbed as the 51st state.

“Needling” ffs – this isn’t high school, this isn’t a bar, this isn’t the playground. None of the crap that Trump does is cute or funny or trivial; it’s all part of the huge dismaying shameful nightmare that is Trump’s openly fascist dictatorial takeover.

The office of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The lake is one of multiple Great Lakes that the U.S. and Canada share borders along.

Multiple? Why multiple? There are five. Why say multiple instead of five? We can all hold the thought of five big lakes without getting lost, surely.

You know…having a fascist dictator who succeeds at being a fascist dictator because of having a giant fascist brain would be one thing, but seeing an ignorant mushbrain like Trump do it is humiliating. Really really really humiliating.

At long last, Jolyon, have you no sense of shame? Do you never stop to wonder why you keep filming yourself telling people to hate and damage institutions you don’t like?

Jolyon Maugham says 'we are going to take the fight right to the throats of these vile outlets' – announces paid ad campaign to try to reach the subscribers of @DailyMail @Telegraph @thetimes @spectator pic.twitter.com/YxYeUfLru3

— JewishWomenCount (@jwomencount2) August 26, 2026

What I don’t get (one thing about him I don’t get) is why and how he doesn’t see how skin-crawlingly awful he is when he watches himself talking shit like this. It’s not as if it’s subtle.

He’s a bit like Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess of Grantham. Pompous, de haut en bas, profoundly satisfied with Self. The Dowager, however, had some charm along with the pomposity. Joly on the other hand is nothing but pomposity.

Jolyon explains how difficult it all is and how important he is and how necessary it is for everyone to send money.

Our work is funded by members of the public from whom we crowdfund. In our last financial year they contributed (as our soon to be published financial accounts will show) over 80% of our income. I am enormously proud of this – you are accountable to those who fund you and it is right that we be accountable to the public. 

But the scope of our work is broad and our inboxes feel like a bottomless pit of human misery – from Black academics and other professionals, victims of sexual violence, trans people, whistleblowers and on and on. Those without money who try to live decent lives and do the right thing experience Britain as profoundly broken – its police, so-called justice system, its notional accountability mechanisms, the whole thing is broken – and frequently they find their way to our door. So there is huge need, and we lack the resources to even scratch the surface of it. We are constantly fundraising to do more.

To do more what? He doesn’t say. What they do is crowdfunded, he tells us, but what is the crowdfunding funding? What is it that they do? Besides telling us how important it is that they do what they do? And where the donate button is?

We are profoundly worried about the use of the US driven anti-trans playbook to target Black people. The same lawyers are being instructed, the same “journalists” are being briefed and are pushing the messages, the same tactics are being used (we have moved from “you are a victim of sexual violence not because of men but because of trans women” to “you are struggling not because of the increasingly wealth share of billionaires but because Black people are unfairly advantaged”); and the same press punishment beatings are being used to warn off those who want to advocate for Black community.

What? Who? Where? There’s a lot of passive voice, but no agents. Who is doing all this targeting and instructing and briefing and pushing and using? Funnily enough, he never says.

I have seen this coming for some months and I have been asking some bigger funders to fund us to work in this space – we know how the playbook plays out because we have seen it used on the trans community – but we have not succeeded in persuading those funders.

Seen what coming? What does “this” refer to? Besides the agent-free list of non-specific outrages?

Meanwhile, Good Law Project now has a huge new workstream connected to Professor Arday, an inbox bulging with requests for help from (understandably) terrified Black people. But little in the way of new resources with which to meet that huge extra demand.

What help? What kind of help? What’s he talking about? Does he mean legal help? If so why on earth doesn’t he spell out what his Project is doing? Why is he so systematically and blatantly vague and evasive?

He does finally tell us of one specific action, but after all that hand-waving it seems insufficient.

India Willoughby must be a masochist, or entirely blind to reality. Nothing else can explain his self-exposure here.

I’m not actually from Leeds, I just live there. And claiming I hit on him is libellous. I’ll see him in court and take his IKEA table and single, crushed velvet bed.

And a joiner? He’s obsessed with wood. pic.twitter.com/lBGrSP2Y8b

— Stuart Macintosh (@stueymaco) August 26, 2026

Nobody “hit on” him. Nobody. On the entire planet not one person stepped up to that particular plate.

I mean…I mean…[struggles to find enough words]…Who does this? How many people age 60 try to look like a teenage girl and then claim that people are hitting on them??? The gulfs of humiliation surely discourage even the craziest people, and yet…

Man seeks to insult man, calls him an epithet that means terrible evil woman [and female dog]. Thanks, man.

Trump is an absolute complete dumbass.

Fighting canada in a trade war is what he's doing because he's a small man who can't defeat real enemies like Iran so he picks on friends.

Little bitch

— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@AdamKinzinger) August 24, 2026

Mayor of Hackney Zoë Garbett welcomes trans people using single-sex toilets

Silly headline. The issue is not single-sex toilets, it’s which single-sex toilets. The point is that people who claim to be trans want to use the toilets of the sex they are not, and that’s dangerous for women, to say nothing of the awkwardness and discomfort of women and men.

“I consider trans women to be women and trans men to be men,” said Garbett.

Yeah, see, it’s not an “I consider” kind of thing. At all. It’s just a brute fact. Women are women; trans women are not.

Mayor of Hackney Zoë Garbett has said she welcomes trans people using single-sex toilets and has asked council staff not to “police access” to services.

Anything to make life difficult for women, eh?

Garbett said: “I consider trans women to be women and trans men to be men.” She added: “I want trans people to be able to access services they identify with and that they feel safe and comfortable using.”

And she wants everyone else – 99 percent of the population – to feel unsafe and uncomfortable.

Despite public concerns about whether it is safe for trans people to use single-sex toilets, she said: “Absolutely yes it is.”

Then she’s either stupid or a liar. It’s well known that creepy men like to get creepy in women’s toilets, and she’s giving the ones in Hackney free rein to be as creepy as they like.

Following the April 2025 Supreme Court ruling, Garbett spoke out in solidarity with the trans community, calling the decision “shameful”.

She said: “London is a city that attracts millions around the world, and it should be a welcoming and safe place for both trans visitors and trans Londoners alike.”

But not for everyone else.

Originally a comment by iknklast on Just ask women.

It seems possible to me that Linehan (and I don’t know much about him, except what I’ve read here) may be falling victim to the same problem so many people have: the idea that all goodness must be manifest in those you agree with (even on one issue) and all badness must be manifest in those you disagree with (even on one issue). The inability to tolerate the nuances of political and social issues, where someone you disagree with vehemently on many issues may actually have one or more issues where you agree with them, seems to be the order of the day anymore.

I felt that once, when I found myself agreeing with Dubya on something important. Then I discovered I agreed with Jonah Goldberg on something. It disturbed me, until I realized that there are none of us who are perfect, and no one I am in perfect alignment with on all issues (and that includes everyone here, and I hope you can understand that those places where I disagree do not make you nazis in my mind). I find I don’t even agree with myself all the time; some of my views have changed over time, and I wince at things I have thought, or written, or said, in the past.

There is a great deal of discussion on whether we should align with our enemies on any issue where we agree, even though we disagree on almost everything else. I think we should; we should keep our opinions nuanced, and able to disagree with those people on everything else, and be willing to be outspoken about that. There are many places where I agree with the left, and several places where I think they are absolutely bonkers (trans, for instance, and many of their more extreme environmental views). That doesn’t prevent me from considering myself leftist, progressive, but not ‘woke’, at least not in so far as it requires adopting the entire package, including the nutty beliefs.

As for aligning with the right on the trans issues, I think we should be in uneasy alliance with them, accepting that they are our only allies right now on this issue, but recognizing that they have vastly different, and dangerous, reasons for their anti-trans views, and that they are not really being pro-woman. I don’t believe you always get up with fleas if you lie down with dogs, but I do think you need to be assured you have adequate flea medicine handy, because fleas do tend to jump around.

It is a shame that the ability to work across the aisles on areas of agreement, while maintaining disagreement with all other issues, has given way to purity politics. I retain the right to disagree with anyone about anything, even while agreeing strongly with them about others. This ‘with us or against us’ and ‘purity or death’ mindset is destroying us.

Jolyon the Womenhater is getting reamed.

It's all so utterly fascinating. A particular kind of man is hardwired to insult women for their revolting choice to get older. The obvious sub text being that post 18? 25? we are dried up old hags, of no use or ornament to any man, valued only for our ability to provoke euphoria… https://t.co/l5C5PU0ass

— Sarah Phillimore (@SVPhillimore) August 25, 2026

Sarah’s full comment:

It’s all so utterly fascinating. A particular kind of man is hardwired to insult women for their revolting choice to get older. The obvious sub text being that post 18? 25? we are dried up old hags, of no use or ornament to any man, valued only for our ability to provoke euphoria in his trouser region.

I am sure Maugham is genuinely shocked to be called a misogynist, but once he reaches for that ‘grandmother’ insult for a woman older than 35 who doesn’t toe his line, then I am afraid he has revealed himself to be nothing but.

I note for e.g. that Matthew Scott was not excoriated for dressing like a ‘grandfather’ even though his criticisms of Maugham were arguably more savage.

I would add just one thing: it’s not only that we are no use or ornament, it’s that we are actively disgusting and horror-movie material.

Amnesty has a new slogan. To the surprise of no one, it’s utterly stupid.

That’s just not a generalizable slogan. Lots of people are not what they say they are. Just look at Trump! Look at con artists, fabulists, conceited people, depressed people, confused people, misinformed people, criminals, evangelists, quacks, advertisers, public relations experts – the list is endless. No, people are not automatically who they say they are. In many circumstances it’s a good idea to keep that in mind.

People who claim to be the sex they are not are definitely not “who they say they are”.

Via Laurence Moran, Andrew Coyne in The Globe and Mail on Trump v Canada:

This is not a negotiation in any meaningful sense of the word. It is an extortion racket. A negotiation involves an exchange of offers. But there is no offer on the American side. There is only a threat: Give us what we want or we will hurt you. The demands, what is more, as often as not have nothing to do with tariffs, or trade, or the economy.

To say the Trump administration are not free traders is not just understatement: it’s beside the point. They’re not even protectionists, really. Their objective is not to replace free trade with managed trade. It is to use tariffs as a weapon to advance their broader foreign policy objectives – namely, hemispheric domination.

They have no interest in getting a deal, ever. They want rather to perpetually hold out the threat of trade war to hammer us into submission. Either we agree to their demands – to align our external trade policy with theirs, to give the U.S. privileged access to our resources, to buy only from American defence contractors – and accept being reduced to a vassal state. Or they bomb us into the stone age, economically speaking.

But in fact that is not the choice. Because even if we accept their terms, there is nothing to stop Mr. Trump from bombing us anyway, or threatening to. Indeed, accepting his demands may simply persuade him to make further threats and further demands, since we would have proven that threats work.

At the moment there is much concern that retaliation on our part might lead Mr. Trump to escalate (indeed, he already has). But returning to the bargaining table may as easily do the same. Mr. Trump, in short, will do what he will do. He plainly wishes us ill, for whatever reason, and there is nothing much we can do to alter his behaviour.

What we can do is refuse to ratify it. What we can do is refuse to reward it. What we can do is preserve our freedom, our independence, and our dignity – to show Mr. Trump that whatever he throws at us, we cannot be coerced. Walking out of the negotiations was the easy part. Staying out is the test.

Snuggling up to China and Russia and trying to demolish Canada. That’s the US now.

Sall Grover on Facebook:

A few weeks ago, I sent a cease & desist concerns notice to Pride In Protest, Trans Action Network & Macquarie Uni Queer Collective as they were distributing & posting material calling me a racist, twansphobe & saying demonstrable lies about Giggle. It is my opinion that the intention was incitement. They all ignored the notice & doubled down on the material.

I’m actually not a litigious person, nor am I an idiot. I am not going to take the most powerful demographic in the country – trans – to court. Why would I bother? It would achieve nothing.

My plan was always to use it in the court of public opinion, the most important court there is, with the evidence to prove how this demographic is behaving, using their unprecedented legal & social capital to intimidate the women they so desperately want to be (but never will be).

Trans will win some battles along the way, but we will win the war, because reality does always win. Sometimes you just have to fight for it.

For years and years and years you have to fight for it.

Hottest oceans.

The world’s oceans were hotter than ever previously recorded on Saturday, according to the latest data.

The average surface temperature was 21.1C, with the rising marine heat a stark indicator of the climate crisis. More than 90% of the heat trapped by carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning enters the oceans.

Hotter oceans exacerbate the sea level rise and extreme storms that threaten billions of people, as well as driving marine heatwaves that decimate sea life and undermine coastal livelihoods, scientists warned.

Other than that, it’s no big deal. Go on, buy that new SUV, you know you want to.

The northern hemisphere summer has already been hit by record-breaking heatwaves, drought and wildfires in Europe and North America, and intense rain and typhoons in Asia.

…

“The record is another clear signal of an ocean under growing stress,” said Dr Samantha Burgess, at the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), which produced the new data. “El Niño is adding heat to the system, but it is doing so on top of decades of human-driven warming. The consequences are already visible: the number of marine heatwave days globally has more than tripled since the early 1990s.”

…

“The record is another clear signal of an ocean under growing stress,” said Dr Samantha Burgess, at the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), which produced the new data. “El Niño is adding heat to the system, but it is doing so on top of decades of human-driven warming. The consequences are already visible: the number of marine heatwave days globally has more than tripled since the early 1990s.”

Warmer oceans contribute to sea level rise because of thermal expansion of the water, increasing flooding risks for coastal communities and low-lying island nations. Higher ocean temperatures also supercharge extreme weather events, because warmer seas transfer more energy and water vapour to the atmosphere, intensifying rainfall and storms.

Most of the planet-heating CO₂ from fossil fuel burning and forest destruction is absorbed by the oceans. However, a hotter ocean is less efficient at absorbing CO₂. This is potentially weakening one of the planet’s most important natural buffers against global heating, the scientists said.

Oh well.

Pink News does not know how to journalism.

Woman ordered to pay compensation over ‘horrific’ transphobic messages

Under that is a generic photo of a woman of – yes! – grandmotherish age (cue taken from Jolyon Maugham was it?) poking daintily at a phone, with a potted plant by her side.

A woman in Scotland has been ordered to pay compensation after admitting sending a series of “horrific” transphobic messages to a trans woman.

Oh dear oh dear oh dear, how horrific. Like what, for instance?

Lyndsey Peebles, 67, pleaded guilty to sending messages of a “grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing character” between 29 September and 20 October last year.

Court papers said the messages concerned the victim’s gender and were sent to cause distress, with the charge aggravated by prejudice relating to transgender identity, as reported by The National.

Yes ok we get it; examples please?

Appearing at Greenock Sheriff Court for sentencing this week, Peebles was told by Sheriff James Varney that, in a social work report, she had indicated she “did not think the individual could have been hurt by the comments”, remarks he described as “horrific”.

Her solicitor said Peebles’ judgement had been “clouded” by “serious issues” at the time, which she had since addressed, adding that she was “truly ashamed” and had “never been in any form of bother before”.

Sheriff Varney told her: “Be under no illusion, this is a hate crime you have pled guilty to,” adding that the comments had “no place in society”.

And then in the last paragraph we get the details of her sentence.

See the problem?

No substance at all. Nothing. A blank. Lots of horror-shouting, with zero particulars.

Is this how Pink News usually does journalism?

Breathtaking.

Polite white grandmother forsooth – who DOES he think he is? Does he think he’s not white? Does he think he’s too young to be a grandparent? He is right about the polite bit though: polite he is not.

But really, that gutter-level instinctive contempt for women tells us allllllll we need to know about Jolyon Maugham QC.

To the surprise of no one, it turns out that Trump has been lying about that stupid “ballroom” he’s building.

Trump is claiming that ballroom is necessary because it will also provide a secure underground facility in case of a national emergency, an argument his lawyers have used in court. But former White House officials told The Washington Post that the building already has a fortified bunker deep underground that was built more than a decade ago to shelter the president and White House staffers.

The facility, located over 60 feet underneath the White House, was secretly built during the Obama administration and can house dozens of people for multiple weeks, the officials told the Post. It can withstand a nuclear bomb and was designed to give the president a secure command center if such a disastrous scenario takes place.

…

Administration officials such as White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller have used national security arguments to defend the ballroom. Miller wrote in a court filing that the construction “serves continuity-of-government interests by ensuring that the President and senior national security staff are able to operate from a protected facility during any attack on the nation’s capital.”

In an August 13 filing to the Supreme Court, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll wrote, “Securing this reinforced subterranean node guarantees uninterrupted command and control in place.”

Yebbut they already have one. Guys guys guys they already have one.

Whatever. They’ll just go right ahead and build his hideous ballroom anyway.

We’re not the ones unraveling.

Jon Ronson’s The Castle profiles Linehan’s gender-critical stance on men in women’s prisons and sports, plus medical transitions for minors, as part of men’s lives unraveling under online scrutiny. The chapter details how their past friendship soured over transgender disagreements, costing Linehan his TV career and relationships. Supporters like actor James Dreyfus praise Linehan’s tenacity and generosity, while critics call him obsessive; Linehan sees the attacks as efforts to silence debate on protecting women and children.

This story is a summary of posts on X and may evolve over time.

We are entirely raveled thank you very much.

Wait what?

Jon Ronson surveys the ruins of manhood

In The Castle, the author seeks out men who have seemingly pulled up the drawbridge on reality, from a delusional Connecticut ‘lord’ to gender-critical obsessive Graham Linehan

✍️ Megan Nolanhttps://t.co/qoJtbewaBv

— The Observer New Review (@ObsNewReview) August 23, 2026

Being gender critical = pulling up the drawbridge on reality?????

We’re the ones who ignore reality? As opposed to the people who insist that humans can change sex?

How does that make sense? How is Jon Ronson defining “reality”? Does Jon Ronson really think that, say, “India” Willoughby is a woman?

He is such a shit.

Says the wannabe hipster WHITE man old enough to be a grandfather. I will give him the “polite” bit though; he is very far from polite.

The Daily Mail v The Annoyingest Barister:

Left-wing campaign group Good Law Project has been accused of ‘hypocrisy’ after becoming an offshore trust in Jersey.

Director Jolyon Maugham KC has restructured the non-profit organisation so it is owned by a ‘purpose trust’ on the island. But legal experts say the move is ‘enormously hypocritical’ because becoming a trust will ‘give it the benefits’ of being set up like a charity without having oversight from regulators.

Well Joly doesn’t need oversight, because he is perfected.

Veteran barrister Barbara Rich said the restructuring meant that GLP would operate ‘without the burden of charity registration’.

She added: ‘[This] is not just because in England that imposes restrictions on political activity but because my impression is that Jolyon Maugham is pretty antagonistic towards the Charity Commission generally and would prefer to have a free hand [rather] than be subject to any regulator at all. It’s enormously hypocritical.’

Well when Jolyon does a thing he does it big.